Ecosystem Programs
Ecology consists of many aspects on the Fishlake National Forest. Some of these include Sage Grouse Habitat monitoring on both Upland and Riparian Monitoring, Seed Collection, Native Plant Program, Long Term/Repeat Photography, Monitoring Wildlife, and Pollinator Surveys.
The Ecosystem program staff study to understand the structure, function, and dynamics of forest ecosystems, including the relationships between organisms and their environment. This program consists of employees who develop and implement strategies to protect, restore, and enhance the health and diversity of ecosystems, contributing to the agency's mission of sustaining healthy forests and grasslands. They provide the majority of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) support for Forest project planning. When our forests are undervalued, they are increasingly susceptible to development pressures and conversion. Recognizing forest ecosystems as natural assets with economic and social value can help promote conservation and more responsible decision-making.
Botany
Botanists and the Pollinator Coordinator at Fishlake work each day among different plant forms like trees, flowers, shrubs, cacti, grasses, forbs, butterflies, bees, moths, flies and wasps. Botanists will record ground cover type found at one-foot increments along a 100-foot-long tape, with four or five tapes (like spokes of a bicycle that extend outwardly from a center T-post), for long-term allotment measurements.
They look for the survival and monitor the recovery of a plant species after a fire to keep old growth trees growing strong and removing overground ground shrubs that could turn a small fire into a stand replacing fire.
They protect and monitor threatened, endangered and sensitive plant species and plant species that are possible candidates for federal protection listing if their populations don't increase soon.
A new responsibility of some botanists is to also collect the data on pollinators within the forest, whether the pollinators are butterflies, moths, bees, flies, wasps or other flying insects.
Fisheries / Aquatics Biology
The Fisheries program basically operates in four areas:
- Support to other functions - primarily through determining NEPA data needs, conducting any needed inventories or monitoring, and providing resource analysis for forest project planning.
- Conducting NEPA analysis and project implementation to improve forest fisheries habitat, primarily focusing on stream enhancement.
- Conducting monitoring and restoration projects for forest sensitive aquatic species with Conservation Agreements or Conservation Plans with Interagency Partners.
- Finally, the fisheries program focuses on general recreational fisheries and native non-game fish through habitat improvement projects and assisting the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources with monitoring activities.
Hydrology
The Hydrology staff conducts studies on water quantity and quality across the Forest. They are responsible for Hydrology and Soils resource analysis for Forest project planning. Other duties include:
- Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem (GDE) inventories across the forest to map new springs and wetlands, their characteristics, and how they are impacted by actions/activities.
- Rosgen stream classification and Pfankuch stream stability surveys.
- Assist other staff with riparian monitoring and fisheries activities.
- Conduct outreach and public education.
- Conduct detrimental soil disturbance (DSD) surveys across the forest pre- and post- implementation of projects like mechanical treatments and prescribed fires.
- Best Management Practices (BMP) monitoring is conducted to determine the implementation and effectiveness of soil and water resource protections
